There is a trend in the death care industry towards personalizing to the deceased the funeral products and the funeral or other memorial service to provide a more meaningful memorial experience for the family and friends of the deceased. The casket in which the deceased is displayed can be customized to fit the needs and preferences of the deceased and the family. For instance, a wide variety of materials, finishes, colors, and decorative ornamentation can be chosen for the casket.
Some casket designs incorporate decorative or ornamental corner pieces secured to the casket during fabrication thereof. In many, if not most, prior designs, these ornamental corner pieces are rigidly affixed to the casket shell. Consequently, if a customer purchasing the casket is not pleased with the particular pre-installed ornamental corner pieces, and wishes to customize the casket exterior to his or her taste, the funeral director must go through a lengthy and complicated process to first remove the original ornamental corner pieces and then reinstall the ornamental corner pieces chosen by the customer. This process typically requires manual manipulation and access to the interior of the casket which may require the removal of bedding, lining, and the like. Such a process is time consuming and can damage the otherwise new casket and is thus frowned upon and generally avoided by the funeral director.
To more effectively market caskets, the funeral director desires to offer a wide variety of ornamental corner pieces from which a customer can select according to the customer's taste. However, to offer such a wide selection, and to avoid the undesirable practice mentioned above, the funeral director would have to maintain a large inventory of many different casket material/finish and corner piece combinations, which is also undesirable. To minimize the required inventory of finished caskets, the funeral director could simply have one casket of each material/finish provided that the funeral director had some means providing for the quick and efficient changing of the ornamental corner pieces on each casket. As such, the customer could quickly view numerous corner pieces on a single casket, and the funeral director would need only stock a single casket of each material/finish. Prior casket designs, which rigidly affix the ornamental corner pieces, do not permit such quick and efficient changing of the ornamental corner pieces as discussed above.
In response to this need, the assignee devised attachment mechanisms to permit the quick and efficient installation and removal of ornamental corner pieces onto and from caskets. Examples of such mechanisms are disclosed in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 7,591,052 for Quick Change Casket Ornament Attachment Mechanism, U.S. Pat. No. 7,340,810 for Quick Change Casket Corner Attachment Mechanism, U.S. Pat. No. 6,928,706 for Quick Change Casket Corner Attachment Mechanism, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,466 for Quick Change Casket Corner Attachment Mechanism, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein as if fully set forth in their entirety.
The above noted attachment mechanisms thus allow ready interchangeability amongst whatever casket ornaments are presently available and on hand, thereby providing a casket purchaser with a degree of personalization. However, rather than being limited to the funeral director's stock on hand of casket ornaments, it would be desirable if a family member or loved one could in essence “design and fabricate,” at the funeral home at the time of the funeral or other memorial service, casket ornaments with even more meaningful personalization tailored even more specifically to the deceased, that could also be readily attached to the casket.
Accordingly, further advancements in these areas are desired.